Smart Layer is a script for Maya that significantly speeds up and simplifies the animation adjustment. It is a huge time saver and replaces hours of routine work with just a few clicks done in seconds:

Very often we need to change the animation distance, to match the environment/ game design metrics/ or to maintain the required movement speed. Doing it directly with animation layers causes feet sliding, resulting in boring manual work.

This is a perfect situation to use the script with the offset algorithm. The script "understands" how to apply the shift in the animation layer, so the result would look organic, and there would be no feet sliding:

We can go further and besides a simple shift apply the whole pose to the animation! The script interpolates delta by position/rotation, resulting in a smooth no-feet-sliding blend. You can have one animation with many different idles, plus it solves gimbal issues along the way:

And the application goes beyond that, you'd be surprised to see what people invent with this technique, for example, here is how you can create a strafe animation from walk-forward in less than one minute: 

Sometimes you need the adjustment to be a little bit more curved, and this is the case where the spline algorithm kicks in! It allows to achieve a smooth movement using just a few keyframes, and again, no feet sliding: 

With spline you can easily "bend" animation, for example, here a character attack-forward is transformed into a directional attack, and no manual work is required. This technique can be used to make character's starts, skills, reactions, etc. 

And finally the transformation algorithm. It allows to interpolate not just position/rotation, but the whole transformation matrix. So, when we turn the character, the whole turn itself is interpolated. Super helpful when need to add rotation to the animation: 

By combining turn and offset - the transformation algorithm reconstructs the movement in a circle. To make the whole process easier you can use a helper rig - an additional feature that helps to locate objects in the correct spot: 

The script is available at my Gumroad page here:

Almost forgot about the little cherry on top. The script works not only with bipeds but with any characters, quadrupeds, spides, bizarre monsters - whatever, it's just math, so there is no difference. I'm going to prepare a video, but need to find a proper rig & animation first  

Right now the script is technically in beta (as it is only a few months old). Tested in Maya 2020-2025 on Windows/Mac OS, with rigs Advanced Skeleton, Mgear, HIK and others.